


Recondite Confections

by MarionThorne



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Cannibalism, Gen, Guro, Jack is a cannibal and if you don't like that i would get the hell out of dodge right now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 01:53:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarionThorne/pseuds/MarionThorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only thing that can possibly curb Jack's hunger is the body of another spirit. After Pitch plants the thought of cold going good with dark into his head, the solution to the problem with Pitch is obvious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recondite Confections

**Author's Note:**

> Another kink meme fill. Also, I'm warning you again, THIS CONTAINS GRAPHIC SCENES OF VIOLENCE, GORE, AND CANNIBALISM. THAT'S RIGHT, CANNIBALISM.  
> Fuck, writing cannibalism about a kid's movie.... I get a special place in hell. U _U

Jack wasn't quite sure why the fact that he didn't eat on a regular basis felt wrong. He had never eaten before, and though he felt no hunger, it still troubled him. The other spirits he came across tended to be rather aggressive, and so he never had any chance to observe their eating habits either.

This was but a minor issue with him. After all, he'd much rather occupy his thoughts with ways to entertain the kids and enact mischief on the adults. Life continued on as it usually did, but one day something was different.

He couldn't identify it. It was a feeling, but at the same time it was a pain in his body, right in his belly. Belly pains meant hunger, right? He wasn't quite sure how he knew to identify the sensation, but he did. it had been years since his awakening from the lake outside Burgess, and only now did he feel hunger. It was strange, as he knew humans had to eat several times a day.

So he tried to satisfy his desire. He tried eating the berries and drinking nectar from honeysuckle, but while sweet, it did nothing to ease the pain in his belly. Then he tried hunting forest rodents, and feasted on their cooked flesh. This felt more satisfying to him, but still his stomach grumbled at him for sustenance. 

Each day became more troublesome. It has been a week since the sensation first presented itself, and by this point he is desperate. He has tried eating anything he thinks won't tear up his innards, ice not included, but no matter how full his belly is, the pain only increases each second. 

Jack was so very close to the point of just giving up. He was positively ravenous, pain rocketing up his spine with every movement made. He was currently curled into a tight ball on the frozen ground somewhere near the Canadian-American border, having wandered in his single minded determination for something to eat. Then there was a distraction - the shuffle of small feet moving snow around. He raised his head to look at what had approached and was hit with an unfightable wave of animalistic instinct.

Though it felt like an instant to him, he returned to his senses with a pleasantly full stomach. Not only was his belly full, but also satisfied in a way he hadn't felt before. Yet, there was something nastily sticky coating his hands.

He would later hear rumors of some supernaturally tuned children hearing the howl of upset in the winter winds.

Covering him all the way up to his elbows was cold, red blood. It dripped from his fingers and drenched the sleeves of his shirt. His cloak, too, was spattered in the mess. And yet.... he brought a hand to his face, but even though he could not feel it due to the already filthy digits, he knew that his face, too, was soaked in the stuff.

And directly in front of him was a skeleton with nothing but the barest bits of meat clinging to it. The only part left almost complete was the face, sans eyes, which revealed the corpse to be one of the larger, human-like elves.

Despite what some may juncture, Jack was an intelligent boy, and he knew well exactly what he'd done and what that meant.

It was a shock, at first, one that had him holed up within the most inaccessible glaciers of the north. He was terrified that he would lose control and eat somebody again. What if he attacked a spirit that was important to the world, like The Sandman or Mother Nature? Sure, he'd be no match for them, but then he'd be dead. Or, perhaps even worse than that, what if he attacked a human? A child? The thought was too much to bear.

But he knew he needed to control this before he got to that point again. So he allowed himself a compromise. He would feast on the flesh of other spirits when need be, but only those who desired to do harm to him or humans.

And it was with a heavy heart that he allowed himself out of the cave again, unable to shake the guilt that he would devour more than just a single sentient being in the future.

The future turned out to be one year later, and he refused to allow the gnawing within his belly to become an uncontrollable urge this time. The very first time he felt it, he finished the ice ferns on the trees of the area quickly and called the wind to aid him in his search.

Quickly enough, he came across just the right kind of creature, and rather nearby as well. It was a Wendigo, the massive hairy beast lurking around at the edges of the forests near Maine. He wasted no time in slaying the creature, telling himself it was to keep it from reaching humans for it to devour, though in reality it was because deep within himself, he wanted it.

Instead of taking his meal like a savage as he had the first time, the wind carried it with him to a secluded spot outside of Burgess, deep in the woods where people and spirit alike were unlikely to cross him. The fact that any human resemblance had long left the creature helped ease him into skinning and butchering it. He cut it into tiny pieces to be easier stored, as he doubted he could eat the whole thing like he had last time.

Sitting in front of the fire, above which laid some bits of skewered meat hanging from a spit, he couldn't deny the rush of power he got from the flesh. Though he had been too in a panic to acknowledge it last time, he remembers the feeling. It was as if with each bite, he became more aware of the essence of winter. It was around him, glittering in abstract designs upon windows, icy lakes, and trees; it was inside of him, holding him from the inside out like a protective sibling and giving him the power to stay safe.

He thought perhaps it would be another year until he would have to feed again, but the waiting time was lessened by a month this time. Each time after it, the time between his desire for food decreased more and more, until about fifty years after his first feeding, he realized he needed food once every month.

(But there were the times he'd feel guilty for later, the ones where he would come across a winter spirit and the want would strike him without need, and he would indulge it and bask in the power surge afterward for days.)

He hadn't had one of those in a while. Actually, it had been a while since he ate and he was sure a meal was due soon, which worried him. After all, he was kind of in the middle of stopping The Boogeyman from sending the world into perpetual nightmares and didn't really feel like explaining to his friends why a few fairies or elves went missing. (He'd feel so bad afterwards, but the elves are close to winter and North wouldn't miss just one...)

No. He'd wait it out. He'd done it before, and lasted a little over a week before he went berserk, so this time he could last longer. He was sure.

He hadn't counted on Pitch Black's speech wracking his mental barriers so thoroughly, though. That day on the glacier with the Nightmare King, he considered joining the other man. After all, who else knew of such solitude that Jack had suffered?

But then he remembered why he stayed alone. And Pitch just had to throw in that comment about cold and dark that opened up all new realms of possibility for him.

He'd eaten strong spirits before, whenever they got a little bit to power hungry with the humans under their domain. There was a reason Hel's old lair was open for Pitch's perusal, after all. And oh, the taste was nothing like that after a winter spirit, but it was just as delicious all the same! Like smoked meat steeped in rose water and wine...

He shook his head to rid himself of the memory. He was not helping himself at all. In fact, he had almost managed to convince himself that eating Pitch would be a bad idea before that particular train of thought. But now, he was about ready to just run into the man's lair and gobble him up like one of the many nightmares that the Nightmare King crafts for children.

Jack could excuse himself for eating Pitch. After all, the man was a menace and his stubborn nature would likely prove him to be a problem again in the future. But Jack had friends now, a bundle of precious friends that he couldn't let know of his dietary tendencies. They'd hate him, abandon him back to the cold and companionless darkness, or maybe even throw him to the other cannibalistic winter spirits as a show of karma. Some days, he thinks he wouldn't blame them for it.

Such as one day, nearly a week after this particular epiphany, when he finds himself once again in the desolate woods outside of Burgess with one of Santa's elves squirreled away beneath his hoodie. He'd grabbed the little thing and rushed out of the shop before anyone even knew he was there. His resolve had crumbled, little excuses made up to himself here and there to assure himself that his actions would mean better in the long run.

But he couldn't risk a single thing, not even a fire to cook the flesh. He removed the small elf and, assured it wouldn't go anywhere since the thing looked merely affronted and didn't realize the danger in front of it, removed his hoodie and placed it in the limb of a tree to assure it would get no blood on it.

He grabbed the elf in his hands, and with an apologetic look, snapped its neck. It was the least he could offer.

He began with the entrails, which always offered him a much more concentrated connection with his winter soul, and once the abdominal cavity was clean, he began munching on the flesh of its limbs. So consumed was he by his meal that he didn't even notice the sound of slithering shadows rushing through the grass behind him.

Jack did notice the surprised intake of air and quickly abandoned his meal to see who had caught him. And who else would it be standing beneath the shade of the very tree he'd placed his shirt on than Pitch Black himself? Jack's eyes grew wide with fright, which the Boogeyman inhaled with relish.

Yes, this could work out very well indeed.

Jack was silent, unable to conjure the words to get him out of this situation, this bad, terrible, worst case scenario. Pitch would tell, and oh Man in the Moon, how would he get the other to agree to silence?

Pitch knew all of these things, and began to slowly circle the distraught, immortal teen before him. Jack was quite a sight as he was, and Pitch couldn't be more pleased at the sight. After all, how would children ever be able to idolize the boy before him? The animal of a boy with blood running down his chin and chest, who lived by eating his own kin?

"What a sight you are, Jack... have your friends seen you like this? What about children? What do you think it would do to them to know that one of their idols, one of the symbols of good they put their belief in, is actually a monster?"

Jack grew still, and suddenly the stare he held with pitch became hard, like the the icy core of Antarctica. "You wouldn't dare."

Pitch laughed, loud and long. "And who is going to stop me? You? Are you going to run out in the streets as you are now and show everyone your sin of your own accord?"

There was silence, complete and total. No rustling of the trees, no sound of shadows on the ground or wind whistling above. But then, there was the smallest 'chink' of encroaching ice, which soon came forth seemingly from no where. It crawled up trees and suffocated the ground like an infection, and spikes of it angrily burst from where it touched. 

And before Pitch's eyes, Jack began to change. Subtly, but to a being who had been around long enough to learn that the small things certainly count, it was glaring. The hair on the boy's arms lengthened until it became an obvious two inches long, and his fingernails turned black, jagged, and sharp. His canines lengthened and Pitch could just barely detect the blue sheen that indicated wraith venom.

It was Pitch's turn to be uncertain. What was this boy? Before he had any chance to vocalize his thoughts, Jack was upon him with tooth and claw bared.

The fight was long, but thankfully quiet. There were no giant explosions of power to be seen from the sky, as Jack ensured that Pitch would need to use every ounce of power he had in hand to hand combat. This, he was an expert at, and with his rage fueling his connection to winter, he was more powerful than ever. His blackened hands became coated in ice, slowly becoming bigger and sharper claws as the battle dragged on.

Pitch's arms were, at this point, a bloody mess of missing flesh and torn robe. He panted with exertion and shook from it. And then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a familiar black cloaked specter in the sky.

And that was all the distraction Jack needed to slit his throat.

Yet, still Pitch fought until his waning strength allowed Jack to pin him down, pressing his back into the ground with his weight. It was only then that he seemed to realize the extent of his injuries, his eyes traveling down to his front and going wide at the sight of the slippery black blood there. All Jack had to do was hold him there until the Nightmare King passed out, at which point the boy plunged his clawed hands into the still rising and falling chest to pull out the treasure within.

When his hand came back out, coated in black that seemed to border on a state between liquid and gas, he held the fluttering heart in his palm and brought it to him. The smell wafted to him and seemed to quell his rage, as he sighed with content and his visage returned to his normal state.

It was indescribable. The smell was like an equal mixture of cinnamon and what he thinks the color of a dark oak tree would smell like, with the underlying layer of toned down copper. It was exquisite, and he couldn't stop himself from eating the organ whole, despite the mess eating a heart entailed and his already full belly.

He allowed himself a moment to bask in the carnal pleasure of it. Pitch's power strengthened his connection to winter so much more than a minor spirit could, and yet it was gloriously different. While every being had a different taste and a different feel in terms of power, Pitch was like nothing he'd eaten before. It was the feeling of shadows giving ice the appearance of being thicker than it really was, the darkness of hypothermia in cold water, and the electric zap of terror.

That electric zap gave him just enough clarity of mind to realize that he needed to take this somewhere else. He was fuller than he'd ever been before, overly saturated with power despite his recent fight, and doubted he could eat a single bite of the fallen Nightmare King. And so, as was his usual routine when he'd bitten off more than he could chew, he called the wind to help him transport the body with him to the well guarded glacier where he stored bodies when he couldn't eat them all. He deposited the limp form in a divot carved out of the ice large enough to hold the grown man, and went back to the lake to wash himself clean of his actions.


End file.
